Weird History What Actually Happened Immediately After Black Tuesday?

The younger crowd, and those in the older crowd that don’t remember high school history, might suspect that Black Tuesday was some sort of holiday-shopping event of yesteryear. Most people, however, remember Black Tuesday – the day when the stock market crashed in 1929 – as the start of the Great Depression. While the reality was not quite so simple and myths about the Great Depression abounded, there were multiple identifiable factors that led to the massive economic decline of the 1930s. October 29, 1929, stands out as such a clear and definitive beginning of the financial end.

To make a long story short, Black Tuesday occurred when the economic uncertainty that had been building through the Roaring ‘20s – with its excessive spending and over-crediting – came to a head. Black Tuesday was actually precipitated by Black Thursday on October 24, when several savvy investors sold their stocks, anticipating a crash in the market. This ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, as panicked investors saw this sudden dip in stocks and rushed to sell their own shares on Black Tuesday. This tanked the stock market immediately, and it set in motion a series of devastating effects that would alter the United States of America forever.

A Prominent Financier Shot Himself

A common stereotypical image from Black Tuesday is that of stock brokers lining up to jump to their deaths from office buildings in financial despair. Of course, this didn't actually happen. Suicides did spike in the wake of the crash, and some of those people did leap from buildings, but not all of that was tied directly to the crash itself. In reality, the suicide rate had been rising throughout the 1920s; it didn't suddenly explode with the economic crisis. One very direct death caused by Black Tuesday, however, was that of J.J. Riordan. A New York banker, Riordan had lost all of his personal savings in the crash and took his own life shortly thereafter. He didn'tjump from a building either – he shot himself instead.

Wall Street Closed For “Clean Up”

Black Friday was really more of a “Black Week,” one that lasted from Black Thursday on October 24, 1929, until the Friday of the week after. On that day, Wall Street finally closed its doors and stopped all selling for the next few days in order to “clean up.” To be fair, the massive amount of human activity at the Stock Exchange did require quite a bit of actual cleaning up, but the real reason for the shutdown was to give everyone a chance to chill out. It didn't exactly work out that way.

The Stock Market Lost More Than $14 Billion In A Single Day

Just how big was the “crash” of October 29, 1929? Really big. The value of the stock market had been steadily rising throughout the ‘20s, and it had hit a truly exponential rate of growth at the end of the decade, doubling in value between the end of 1928 and September of 1929. The bubble was due to burst, however, and, when it did, it burst in epic fashion. Between Black Thursday and Black Tuesday, more than $26 billion in stock value was lost. When the damage was tallied the day after Black Tuesday, brokers were astonished to discover that $14 billion had been lost in one day. The market would not regain the value it had in September of 1929 until a full 25 years later.

Markets Crashed All Around The World

The stock market crash and Great Depression are often described as purely American events, but that’s not true at all. The truth is that the world had become highly dependent on the American economy in the wake of World War I, and, when the US went down, other nations did too. Black Tuesday precipitated other stock market crashes around the world in a chain of events that helped plunge most of the globe into economic depression. Canada was hit particularly hard, with stock market crashes occurring in Montreal and Toronto shortly after Black Tuesday.